Another Thermos "Explosion"

Another Thermos "Explosion" FARM HOME Miscellaneous 29-5-5 After our report in the last issue about a Minnesota family's experience with an "exploding" Stanley steel thermos, we got a phone call from Rosemary Danford of Cottonwood, Alabama. "We had the same experience and it was horrible," Rosemary told us. "My husband, Louie, is the local fire chief. He was ready to leave the house shortly after 4:00 a.m. when a cloud of black smoke started coming from the sun porch where I had put his Stanley thermos after filling it with coffee." Black powder was pouring out of a hole in the side of the thermos where the handle had evidently popped off. The thermos is insulated with very fine carbon powder. Rosemary says the powder floated in the air and penetrated to every corner of her house. "We couldn't get the house clean. The carpets, bedding, drapes and many other things in the house had to be replaced. The powder got into the grout in our tile and could not be scrubbed out. If you tried to vacuum it up, the stuff would just smear across the floor. It got into everything," says Rosemary. The day it happened, she was in the house for three hours until she finally got out. "My son called to tell me to leave. I tried to clean up before leaving but I was covered and so was the bathtub and all my towels, so there was no way to get clean. It was a nightmare." She and her husband moved out for 14 days while a specialty cleaning company came in to try to get the house back to normal. Although the Danfords were eventually able to move back in, they still find the black stuff everywhere and Rosemary has had respiratory problems since the incident. Stanley says only a limited number of thermoses with defective handles were produced. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is looking into the problem. According to Stanley, defective models have the number "C02" or "D02" on the bottom.

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